A teleconference is a meeting between two or more participants who are not at the same place at the same time. Teleconferencing is a low-cost alternative to getting large groups of invitees in a single place at the same time for the purpose of having a meeting. The best known example of a teleconference is a conference call with more than two people participating in the call. These teleconferences can have upwards of several hundred people and can last for several hours. An alternative to having a teleconference would be to get these people to the same place at the same time, which is often prohibitive.
Even when participants to a conference call are calling in from the places of their choosing, often only a portion of a teleconference is useful to a participant. Because teleconferences can last for hours at a time, it is wasteful for a participant to wait for the small portion of the teleconference that is useful to her. Furthermore, invitees to teleconferences sometimes cannot attend due to conflicts or other reasons.
Therefore, what is needed is a teleconferencing system that enables people to optimize their time with respect to a teleconference to which they have been invited, without some of the disadvantages in the prior art.